African Leaders of Tomorrow Scholarship

The African Leaders of Tomorrow Scholarship

The scholarship is designed to boost the capacity of the public service in Sub-Saharan Africa by offering to young African public servants the opportunity to undertake fully-funded Master level opportunities in public administration, public policy or public finance at Canada’s universities. The scholarship has a unique approach bringing together academic training, leadership training and mentoring. African scholars are paired with Canadian public servants in a one-on-one mentorship relation designed to help their professional development and practical understanding of Canadian public administration. Furthermore, scholars are embedded in practitioner networks through memberships in IPAC and AAPAM, and are given access to the two organizations’ events and publications.

After a pilot year in 2015/2016, the Scholarship went into full gear. Today almost 30 scholars attend universities across Canada: from the University of British Columbia, to the University of New Brunswick and are working in both official languages. The selection is extremely competitive: over 1,000 applications were received for the 2017/2018 selection process for about 30 scholarships. The process is designed to provide a gender-balanced opportunity to African public servants, therefore each country has a male and a female participant in the scholarship. The success of the initiative is evident not only by the quality and numbers of applicants, but also by how popular the scholarship is across the continent.

To learn more about the scholarship and on how to become a mentor, contact Dr. Andrea Migone